Tchaikovsky – THE QUEEN OF SPADES | The Opera Platform Tchaikovsky – THE QUEEN OF SPADES Composers of Russia ‘What is life? A game!’ Renowned director Stefan Herheim directs Tchaikovsky’s much-loved opera about a young man who, for the prospect of earthly wealth, gambles away his chance for love and happiness. It took Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky only 44 days to write the score of THE QUEEN OF SPADES. ‘It seems to me that this is my best work ever’, writes the composer once the score is finished. After EUGENE ONEGIN, THE QUEEN OF SPADES is Tchaikovsky’s second adaptation of a text by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. It is Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest who reworks Pushkin’s short story into a libretto. Liza loves Herman, a young officer. But the latter wants to draw a secret from her grandmother, the old Countess: How is it that she is such a successful gambler? Herman confronts her and forces her to reveal her secret, menacing her with a revolver. The Countess dies from the shock.

It is her ghost that later appears before the young officer and gives away the fatal sequence of cards: three, seven, ace… After EUGENE ONEGIN in 2011, it is the second time that Stefan Herheim returns to Dutch National Opera to direct a Tchaikovsky opera. Herheim’s productions are famous for their multi-layered levels of interpretation. In THE QUEEN OF SPADES, the director attempts to reflect on the composer’s life, notably his hidden love for men. Dutch National Opera’s former Music Director Mariss Jansons, who has worked with Herheim on the Amsterdam EUGENE ONEGIN, returns to conduct THE QUEEN OF SPADES. Tenor Misha Didyk, a much sought after interpreter of the Russian repertoire, makes his Amsterdam debut in the role of Herman... Information Eugene Onegin | The Opera 101 The Opera 101 Fill out the fields below to contact us! Your name * It seems to me that I am truly gifted with the ability truthfully, sincerely, and simply to express the feelings, moods, and images suggested by a text. In this sense I am a realist and fundamentally a Russian.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky About Eugene Onegin and Vladimir Lensky's duel by Ilya Repin Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is a radiant example of Russian Lyric Opera. A deeply moving tale packed with big tunes, dances and a heart-stopping duel. As with his ballets, Tchaikovsky brings many symphonic elements to the music, plush orchestrations and highly melodic arias. Onegin is a uniquely Russian opera with a universality that has made it globally popular. None of the characters are easy to associate with and yet the events and their actions ring horribly true. The piece provides opportunities for three great soloists as well as requiring top-drawer performances from the Chorus. The very start of the opera and also the first appearance of the recurring 'Fate' Motif. The work is subdivided into three acts, seven scenes and 22 numbers but despite these clear divisions, Tchaikovsky advances a leitmotif-like structure spanning outward from Tatyana’s Letter Scene, the centrepiece of the opera. This isn’t Wagner by any means but you’ll hear the same recurring themes throughout, ever shifting towards the final climactic duet. You called him what?

When Eugene Onegin first travelled the world it did so largely in translation. The first non-Russian performance was in Prague, conducted by Tchaikovsky, and sung in Czech. When it reached England in 1892 it was sung in English. Today most operas are performed in their the original language but for non-latinate language operas we still have to transliterate names so we can talk about them (good luck pronouncing Евге́ний Оне́гин). Throughout this guide we’ve chosen what we’ve found to be the most common spellings (which aren’t necessarily consistent). Tatyana keeps her y (you’ll sometimes see Tatiana) as does Lensky but Yevgeniy becomes Eugene, because at some point in history people decided that two y’s were just too many. Onegin can cause a certain amount of grief as it's not pronounced in the manner a native English speaker might expect (no one-gins here please). The clip below should give you an idea of how it should sound. Onegin Pronunciation Eugene Onegin Baritone The title role. Arrogant and effortlessly weary, his life consists of little but partying yet he still finds the time to be bored.

Filippyevna Mezzo-soprano Tatyana’s nurse, nanny and confidante of sorts. Her major role is to deliver Tatyana’s letter to Onegin. Lensky Tenor A poet, a dreamer and to his detriment a friend to Onegin. He is engaged to Olga. Madame Larina A widowed landowner and the mother of Tatyana and Olga. Kindly and caring. Olga Contralto Tatyana’s sister and Lensky’s Fiance. More important to the opera for her relationships than herself, Olga is young and pretty and she knows it. Prince Gremin Bass Prince Gremin appears only briefly in Act III but gets one of the best arias in the whole opera. Married to, and desperately in love with, Tatyana. Tatyana Soprano A young innocent country girl who dreams of the bright lights of the city. The emotional core of the opera. Triquet Tenor Tatyana’s old and slightly wobbly French tutor. He gets a brief moment to shine in his Act II song to Tatyana. Zaretsky Bass Lensky’s second for the duel.

A much more significant figure than he might appear as he is the only person who could avert the duel in Act II (see the fun fact on dueling for more on this). Synopsis Act I - Running Time: 75 mins Scene 1 We find ourselves at the country estate of Madam Larina, a middle aged widow with two daughters, Olga and Tatyana. Think Chekhov country, beautiful spring surroundings but exceedingly dull for young Russian people. Larina and the nurse Filippyevna are sitting outside. They can hear the young girls singing and Larina recalls her own young courtship and marriage. The peasants who work on the estate enter singing a big harvest song that marks the first big dance of the opera. Tatyana is lost in a romantic novel while her younger sister Olga wants to join in with the harvest festivities. Larina tries to tell Tatyana that life isn’t like a novel, but Tatyana is a young dreamer and doesn’t pay much attention. Visitors have arrived. It is Lensky, Olga’s fiance, and his friend Onegin. They enter and quickly Tatyana reveals herself plainly attracted to Onegin.

Onegin for himself questions why Lensky would choose Olga over her sister. Lensky on the other hand just delights in Olga’s flirtations. Onegin takes a walk with Tatyana describing his boredom at the countryside (he’s a model of Russian dissatisfaction). Tatyana is unsure how to respond as they go inside for dinner. Onegin and Tatyana from a 1908 edition of Onegin Scene 2 We’re in Tatyana’s bedroom. She pesters Filippyevna to tell her of her youthful loves and marriage. Tatyana states she is in love and asks to be left alone. Here begins one of the truly great operatic monologues: Tatyana’s Letter Scene. Through her fevered passion she writes a letter to Onegin revealing the force of her love. Day breaks and she gives the letter to Filippyevna. Kristine Opolais sings Tatyana's Letter Scene Scene 3 Outside again Tatyana awaits Onegin. He arrives and plainly tells her his own feelings. He tells her, not altogether unfairly or unkindly, that he is no man for marriage and would simply be bored by it.

He is not worthy of such love and can only offer her friendship. More icily he suggests she not be so open in future lest other men take advantage. Unable to reply to this, the curtain falls on a distraught Tatyana. Act II - Running Time: 45 mins Scene 1 Onegin dances with Olga, English Touring Opera Three months have passed. It is Tatyana’s name day (a curious tradition similar to a birthday but held on the day that your name is associated with) and a country ball is being held in her honour. A fabulous waltz is heard and Onegin dances with Tatyana. Naturally he is bored and quickly grows irritated by those gossiping around him. Blaming Lensky for bringing him he decides to flirt with Olga. The Act II Waltz Olga reciprocates Onegin’s attention and Lensky loses his cool, jealously accusing Olga. Olga cannot see what she has done wrong and Onegin further pushes the situation by dancing with her again. The situation is temporarily defused when Monsieur Triquet, Tatyana’s French tutor, sings a brief song. As the dancing resumes however it all kicks off.

Lensky, in front of all the guests, renounces his friendship with Onegin and impetuously challenges him to a duel. Onegin has no choice but to accept (see the fun facts for more on the mindboggling Russian affection for duelling). Tatyana faints as the ball ends in disaster. Lensky (Toby Spence) challenges Onegin (Audun Iversen) © Neil Libbert/ENO Scene 2 We are by the riverbank the following morning. Lensky awaits Onegin, reflecting on his daft decision to challenge Onegin (he well knows that he will almost certainly lose and won’t be much happier if he kills his friend either). Onegin arrives late and both raise the fact that they have absolutely no wish to go through with the duel. It is too late for taking things back. The duel begins and Onegin kills Lensky. Act III - Running Time: 35 mins Scene 1 The action leaps forward years and we are now in St Petersburg. A grand ball is taking place and here we find Onegin, who predictably is bored. He has spent years travelling around Europe and now reflects on the emptiness of life (particularly his own).

The Act III Polonaise Prince Gremin enters with his gorgeous young wife. Shock, horror: it is Tatyana now regal, mature and beautiful. Onegin is taken aback as is Tatyana when she catches sight of him. Gremin tells Onegin of his happiness with his loving wife and introduces her to him (unaware of their past!). Onegin suddenly realizes he is in love with Tatyana and decides to write to her and arrange a private meeting. Oh how the tables have turned… Scene 2 Tatyana has received a love letter from Onegin. We now find her in Gremin’s house waiting for his arrival. She cannot work out why he has changed… is it her money and status? He enters and denies all cynical motives, he claims to love her deeply. This moves Tatyana greatly but she asks him to leave. Onegin begs but Tatyana explains that though she still loves him, it is impossible and her loyalty must lie with Gremin. She departs tearfully. Onegin is left alone.

Tatyana (Anna Netrebko) and Onegin (Dmitri Hvorostovsky) Major Arias Ja nye sposobna k grusti tomnoy Olga Kakoi pre krasnïi etot den Triquet Kogda bï zhizn domashnim krugom Eugene Onegin Puskai pogibnu (Tatiana's Letter Scene) Tatyana Uzhel ta samaja Tatiana (Onegin's Arioso) Eugene Onegin History During the latter half of 1876 and into 1877, Tchaikovsky sought a topic for his next opera. The suggestion for “Eugene Onegin”, Pushkin’s poetic masterpiece, came to Tchaikovsky when he was visiting friends, an idea that at first struck him as crazy (and struck many critics in exactly the same way even after they’d heard the opera!). The story lacked plot, the situations bland and the conclusion without climax (not to mention the impossibility of capturing on stage one of the novel’s most powerful elements: the self-conscious, first person narrator).

He quickly fell head over heels for the tale however and swiftly set to work creating a scenario with Konstantin Shilovsky, the co-librettist. This everyday story was a novelty in the world of opera but Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother, Modest, in May 1877, “How glad I am to be rid of Egyptian princesses, pharaohs, poisonings, and stilted effects of all kinds. What a mine of poetry there is in Onegin”. The opera would come together over the next two years but despite Tchaikovsky’s strong drive, all was not plain sailing. Tchaikovsky and Antonina Milyukova Where Pushkin associated himself with Onegin, Tchaikovsky fell for Tatyana. Around the time Tchaikovsky began feverish work on Onegin he received a love letter from a long-forgotten student named Antonina Milyukova, not unlike that sent by Tatyana to Onegin. Tchaikovsky was a closet homosexual and had little interest in Milyukova, but fearing himself acting much like the vile Onegin he ended up marrying her!

In my mind this is all tied up with the idea of Tatyana, and it seemed to me that I myself had acted incomparably more basely than Onegin, and I became truly angry with myself for my heartless attitude towards this girl who was in love with me. Tchaikovsky Lest we get too washed up in Romanticism it is also true that Tchaikovsky feared his homosexuality becoming public and using a marriage as cover was no doubt also on his mind. In any case the whole enterprise was a total disaster for all involved. They lasted together for six weeks before Tchaikovsky tried to drown himself and then fled with his brother to St Petersburg. Tchaikovsky and Milyukova would never divorce, though they rarely met and poor Milyukova spent the last twenty years of her life in a mental asylum. After these traumas Tchaikovsky would progress steadily with work on Onegin first in Switzerland and then Italy where he finished the opera in January 1878. Tchaikovsky was proud of the work but feared what might happen if it were given to one of the grand opera houses.

He wasn’t even sure it should be an “opera” thinking of it as “lyrical scenes”. As a result he gave the students of the Moscow Conservatory the opportunity to premiere Onegin which they did in March 1878, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein. After several years of tinkering by Tchaikovsky, particularly in regards to the final scene, Onegin received its professional debut at the Bolshoi Theatre in January 1881. Initial reactions were mixed; many struggled with the very concept of Pushkin’s poetry being manipulated despite the supreme quality of the music. Internationally the opera was performed sporadically, Gustave Mahler conducted the German premiere in 1892, and it reached England the same year though it would take till 1920 for it to first reach the USA. Fun Facts Poetry Pushkin’s “Onegin” is of note for many reasons but its unusual form is of particular interest (and of particular difficulty for anyone attempting a translation). The book is written almost exclusively in stanzas of iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme "AbAbCCddEffEgg".

The uppercase letters represent feminine rhymes (A rhyme on two syllables, e.g. passion and fashion) while the lowercase letters represent masculine rhymes (One syllable, e.g. head and bed). This form is often called the "Onegin stanza". Ballet John Cranko made a narrative ballet entitled “Onegin” which closely tracks the episodes of Tchaikovsky’s opera (as opposed to an adaptation from the original text). The score for this ballet is also entirely made up on Tchaikovsky music but interestingly uses nothing from Eugene Onegin. The arranged score, by Kurt-Heinz Stolze, mixes and matches from all over Tchaikovsky’s oeuvre including from his much less well known opera Cherevichki (sometimes called The Tsarina’s Slippers). Pushkin's operas Onegin the ballet, © Dee Conway/ROH Though many considered Tchaikovsky’s attempt at turning Pushkin’s “Onegin” into an opera foolish (the plot didn’t fit with the conventions of 19th Century opera), Pushkin’s works have formed the basis for more than a dozen significant operatic works.

Tchaikovsky himself returned with Mazeppa and The Queen of Spades while we also have Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky, Ruslan and Lyudmila by Mikhail Glinka and The Golden Cockerel by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Duels Dueling in Russia was a wildly popular activity, despite having been banned in 1715 by the Emperor because his army kept slaughtering each other (though the threat of hanging can’t have been much of a deterrent considering one of the participants often died anyway). Duels were highly formalized, and it is these rules that eventually force Onegin to shoot despite all his wishes against it. He cannot apologise without first being asked by Lensky’s second, Zaretsky, and as this never comes they are “forced” to duel. After the Duel, Ilya Repin These dueling practices may seem insane, but Pushkin himself was more than a little fond of duelling. He was involved in nearly 30 throughout his life and was eventually done in by a bullet to the spleen during a duel with Georges d’Anthès. Ending How to end Onegin proved one of the trickiest elements for Tchaikovsky.

Not long before the completion of the opera, Tatyana still fell into the arms of Onegin only to be reminded of her fealty by the entrance of Gremin. As you might imagine many were not so impressed to see their heroine still succumbing and Tchaikovsky was encouraged to shift the tone towards Tatyana resolving her situation without help. How Onegin responded varied too, shifting from 'O death, o death! I go to seek thee out!' to ‘Ignominy! ... Anguish! … Oh, my pitiable fate!’. The version we hear today is somewhere between the two (and hinges heavily on how the director wants to stage things) though Onegin’s latter line is usually the one heard. Clarens The Grave of Nabokov at Clarens The village of Clarens, by Lake Geneva in Switzerland, was the place where Tchaikovsky fled with his brother. His mental health was in tatters after his disastrous marriage and the lake air was supposed to be beneficial. Here he wrote a good chunk of the orchestrations for Onegin as well as several other pieces.

This wasn’t Clarens’ only contribution to the musical world as it was also the place where Igor Stravinsky wrote “The Rite of Spring” and “Pulcinella”. What’s more Vladimir Nabokov was buried at Clarens. A remarkable confluence of artists that few villages could compete with! In Brief Librettist Tchaikovsky and Konstantin Shilovsky Language Russian Date of premiere March 29, 1879 Number of Acts 3 The Queen of Spades, Opera by P. I. Tchaikovsky - Rome Opera Tickets - Opera - Recommended Event Dates The Queen of Spades, Opera by P. I. Tchaikovsky This is an opera in three acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – with Russian libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer’s brother – based on the homonymous novel of 1833 by the Russian writer Alexander Pushkin. The Queen of Spades was premiered to great success on 19 December 1890 at the Mariinski Theatre in St Petersburg, with the original title of Píkovaya dama.

This is a postromantic opera which triumphed immediately in Russia and entered into the repertoire of the Slavic musical world, but it took longer to gain popularity in the West, where Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin was preferred. The Queen of Spades has brilliant orchestration and sweeping expressive melodies that convey intense dramatic situations: though we also find wonderfully expressive melodies in Eugene Onegin, there is less dramatic intensity in the latter. In The Queen of Spades the role of Herman, sung by a tenor, is the main highlight, demanding great skill and endurance from the singer, who participates in all seven scenes. Here the opera is presented by the Teatro Costanzi, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, with the action unfolding in St Petersburg at the end of the 18th century during the reign of Catherine the Great. The story revolves around Herman, an army official and a great card player, who has fallen in love with Lisa without even knowing her name. She, however, is engaged to be married to Prince Yeletski. Herman believes that if he discovers the secret that is guarded by the Countess – Lisa’s grandmother and known as the Queen of Spades – his resulting power will enable him to secure Lisa’s love.

But his obsession to discover this secret turns out to be profoundly destructive. And not only for him. About The Queen of Spades — Lowell House Opera About Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades By Roger Hecht, Orchestra Manager Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky was Russia’s first truly professional composer and the first to achieve fame outside his country. Though musically precocious as a youth, he attended St. Petersburg's School of Jurisprudence and began a career as a civil servant. When the lure of music proved too strong, he enrolled at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1862. The Conservatory’s focus on the Germanic style of composition helped make Tchaikovsky the link between that approach and the Russian. That involved adapting Russian harmony to more varied practices, expanding blocky but colorful orchestration toward the more fluid Germanic scoring, and blending the Russian treatment of melody by repetition, sequences, modulations, etc., with German development. Tchaikovsky’s life was full of emotional turmoil. His mother’s death devastated him, and revising his First Symphony led to a nervous breakdown.

Keeping his homosexuality private was stressful, though he had support from family, friends, and particularly his brother, Modeste, also a homosexual. Relations with women were tenuous. An engagement to a Belgian soprano fizzled. Marriage to unbalanced former student Antonina Miliukova, perhaps to mask his homosexuality, was a disaster that he abandoned three months later. There was no divorce, but Tchaikovsky was beset for years with Miliukova’s demands for money and reconciliation. His most positive and important relationship with a woman was with Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow and supporter of the arts. The two carried on a fourteen-year relationship from 1876 entirely through letters. Von Meck paid him a stipend through most of that period, but even more important was her role as a confidant providing emotional support, insight, and encouragement. She was also an advocate and friend of Debussy, who came to admire Tchaikovsky. Personal issues continued to plague Tchaikovsky in the 1880s, when he was a major composer with many major works completed and more to come.

A few of his friends died around that time, stoking fears for his own mortality to the point where he wrote up his will. Several works, including Francesca da Rimini, Eugene Onegin, and the last three symphonies, revealed the effect of those fears and emotions on his life. Another such work was Queen of Spades [1] . The story of Tchaikovsky’s journey to that opera is not entirely clear. After the close of the Italian theater, Director of the Imperial Theaters, Ivan Vsevolozhsky, wanted to commission three operas based on Alexander Pushkin to stimulate Russian opera. Tchaikovsky was his choice for Queen of Spades, the Pushkin novella, but the composer declined, either for lack of interest or because of criticism from conservatives for his daring to set Pushkin’s iconic Evgeny Onegin. Vsevolozhsky then engaged Nikolai Klenovsky. When Klenovsky’s slow progress drove his librettist to quit in 1887, the Director asked Modeste Tchaikovsky to provide a libretto, and apparently engaged another composer as a backup.

Modeste preferred that his brother compose the opera, but Pyotr again declined, probably because he was composing another one, The Enchantress. Only then did Modeste join Klenovsky. After The Enchantress failed, an angry Tchaikovsky was determined to produce a major work to avenge the bad notices. Queen of Spades might have been an option, but he decided to compose an instrumental work, his Fifth Symphony (1888). In December 1889, Tchaikovsky finally turned to Queen of Spades—his tenth and penultimate opera, his third based on Pushkin, and the first composed for singers of his choosing: Nikolai and Medea Figner. The problem was finding relief from distractions so he could work. Production ills were dogging Sleeping Beauty, and the mixed response to its January 1890 premiere included a mild “very nice” from the Czar that Tchaikovsky took as a sign he might be losing Imperial favor. Von Meck was ill, and their correspondence was falling off. The last straw was a letter from Miliukova demanding they reconcile, or she would expose his homosexuality.

In January, the now desperate Tchaikovsky fled to Florence, Italy with Modeste’s partial libretto and some Italian opera scores. The Pushkin story had gripped him by this time, and he worked with such passion and total immersion that composing the confrontation between Gherman and the Countess horrified him, and Gherman’s death drew tears. After forty-four days, he completed the vocal score to what he knew was a masterpiece. Bored with Florence, he moved on to Rome to begin the orchestration. When his celebrity caught up with him there, he returned to Russia with a fresh appreciation of Florence’s tranquility that he later expressed in Souvenirs de Florence. In December 1890, Queen of Spades premiered successfully in St. Petersburg. Performances in Kiev and other cities followed, including premieres in Vienna and New York City conducted by Gustav Mahler. Mixed in with all this were two major events of finality. While in Florence, Tchaikovsky learned that Miliukova had demanded a job at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Embarrassed and frustrated, he cut her allowance in retaliation. She never bothered him again.

The second event did not turn out so well. In October, von Meck ended her stipend, claiming financial problems, though the cause was probably family difficulties. Tchaikovsky no longer had a great need for her money, but he was so hurt that he cut off their correspondence, creating an estrangement and loss that devastated them both. Pushkin’s original Queen of Spades is a short, classically structured and cynical novella. Sparely stated, Gherman uses Liza, an attendant to a Countess, to gain access to her mistress and learn the secret of winning at faro. When Liza discovers his treachery, she leaves him and marries a civil servant. Gherman loses at faro, goes mad, and is institutionalized. Tchaikovsky boldly took that story into the world of grand opera, with a libretto by Modeste, supplemented by texts from other writers including the composer. Liza becomes the Countess’s granddaughter, unhappily engaged to a prince. Gherman loves her from the start and gambles to win money so he’d be worthy of her. His obsession over the Countess’s secret does not strike until he hears Tomsky’s ballad about it.

When Liza learns the truth, she dramatically kills herself. Gherman stabs himself at the gaming table after pulling the losing Queen of Spades. With his last words he declares his love for Liza and his repentance to the cuckolded prince. An interesting example of how such measures work in the theater is contained in Tchaikovsky’s explanation to his brother about why he kept Liza around so long. “Without her, the third act would be without women—that is boring…And the audience must know what happened to Liza.” In addition to those changes, Tchaikovsky added scenes derived from Mozart and some of the scores he took with him to Florence. He also changed the setting from the 19th to the 18th Century. Given Pushkin’s iconic status in Russia, it is no surprise that the changes were met with criticism in many quarters. The Soviet Union even sponsored a 1935 Leningrad production that set the opera to reflect Pushkin’s original. Queen of Spades draws from many sources, including folk, popular, and salon music, along with Russian chant (composed by Tchaikovsky), the Bible, and Freemasonry.

With his use of whole tones denoting otherworldliness in the scene with Gherman and the Countess, Tchaikovsky looks forward to Debussy and the 20th Century. There are even touches of Wagner’s leitmotif and parallels to Tristan und Isolde: helpless love, a maddened male lover, a royal rival, and supernatural influences—interesting, given Tchaikovsky’s public disdain for Wagner and Tristan. Despite its forward looking nature, Queen of Spades is organized in an old-fashioned “numbers” structure of set arias, choruses, etc. Considerable attention is paid to balancing: spirited beginnings to Acts I and III; the quintet about foreboding in Act I and a septet about gambling in Act III; the storms in Acts I and III; surprise at the beginning and end of the opera that Gherman is about to gamble, etc. There are many contrasts involving class and mood, as well as devices like the cheery but eerie “chorus of maids and hangers-on” that accompanies the Countess as she goes about the mundane task of retiring to bed. The result is a study in deception, ambiguity, and hidden meanings.

Among the opera’s more prominent qualities is a feeling of evolution: light to darkness, real world to the “other” world, liveliness to tragedy, life to death, etc. Thus, we see candles doused, a storm darken the sky, three people die at night, specters, ghosts, etc. Prescience is in the air right from a prelude that introduces a motif from Tomsky’s ballad (to the rhythm of a figure from the Fifth Symphony), the “tri karti” subject in the brass, and the love theme. In the early quintet, each major character sings of fears that prove out; storms warn of worse to follow [2] . A motif from Tomsky’s ballad appears when Gherman confronts the Countess in Act II. Polina’s song about love leading to death appears in Gherman’s declaration of love to Liza. Later, a phrase is expanded into a dirge in Liza’s final scene. There are questions of free will. Did Polina want to sing such a morbid song? Did Gherman want to shift focus from Liza to the Countess?

Even time is ambiguous, for example when the Countess sings an aria from Gretry’s Richard the Lion Hearted, written about a dozen years earlier than when the Countess lived but that she claimed to have sung decades earlier. The opera is also a cauldron of numerology, with the numbers assigned to the “winning” cards: 3, 7, Ace (1) the most important, along with 5. Thus, musicologist Simon Morrison sums up the opera’s structure as “3 acts, 7 parts, 1 score.” The “tri-karti” motif is 3 syllables, there are phrases of 5 and 7 syllables, and so it goes [3] . Queen of Spades may be Tchaikovsky’s most forward looking work [4] . Some have associated it with Russian Symbolism, a contemporary literary movement that sought to develop new ways to express language and use the imagery of words. Richard Taruskin called it Russia’s first Symbolist opera [5] .

Morrison wrote that it “played out all of [the Symbolists’] creative obsessions: the relationship between fortune and fate, dream and reality, societal death and societal rebirth…[It also] helped convert the founders of the World of Art circle from literature and painting to opera and ballet” [6] . Not long after writing two great pieces dominated by death, Queen of Spades and the Pathetique, Tchaikovsky met his own demise at age 53 from drinking water during a cholera epidemic. Like the opera, his death was enshrouded in mystery. Theories include negligence, suicide, and execution by students from the School of Jurisprudence afraid of being tainted by the composer’s homosexuality. Whatever the cause, Tchaikovsky died at a time when Queen of Spades, the Pathetique, Iolanta, and Nutcracker showed that their creator was expanding his technique, harmony, and subtlety of orchestration. Had he lived longer, Tchaikovsky might have had an influence on early 20th Century composers similar to what he had on Russian music at the beginning of his career.

As it was, he at the very least influenced Faure, Debussy, Scriabin, and Shostakovich. Like Mozart and Mahler, Tchaikovsky died too soon [7] . [1] Or Pique Dame. French was commonly spoken by the Russian aristocracy, so some works were published with French titles. More idiomatic is La Dame de Pique, Jacques Halevy’s opera on the subject. Pique Dame may reflect the Russian Pikovaya Dama. [2] Verdi used a quartet and a storm in Rigoletto to similar purposes. [3]Roland John Wylie’s Tchaikovsky discusses the numerology aspect of this opera in his analysis of the work. [4]Queen of Spades and Evgeny Onegin are considered Tchaikovsky’s two greatest operas, but most of the others are worth investigating. In many ways, Tchaikovsky is one of opera’s best kept secrets. [5]Richard Taruskin, “Another World: why Queen of Spades is the great symbolist opera” (Opera News, 12/23/1995). [6]Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement.

Morrison also provides a long study on the opera. [7]Other good sources on this opera are Anthony Holden’s Tchaikovsky: a Biography, David Brown’s Tchaikovsky: the Man and His Music, and Francis Maes’s History of Russian Music. models and operas such as Eugene Onegin 1878 and The Queen of - MUS - 178 View Full Document models and operas, such as Eugene Onegin (1878) and The Queen of Spades (1890), coming from the Romantic literary world of Alexandr Pushkin. Russian nationalism has its culminating work in Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky (original 1869), whose hero offers a particularly Russian version of the divided soul of romance. There a devotion to realism absorbing the Russian thinkers and had romantic roots also exist. This happens in the famous scene of the death of Boris, not with a formal aria, but his voice was musically torn lost in oblivion. The example of Glinka was still alive and is reflected in a series of epic and fantastic operas Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

The French romantic opera was not marred by Wagner, but had a distinctive voice in the work of Jules Massenet, Charles Gounod and Camille Saint-Saëns; thus, Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet, admired by Friedrich Nietzsche and Tchaikovsky as an antidote to Wagner, brought a new clarity and immediacy gender unbeaten passionate intensity. Even Claude Debussy, Wagner hostile critic, was a composer who hindered Pelléas et Mélisande when Parsifal (1902) wrote. This preview has intentionally blurred sections. Sign up to view the full version. View Full Document The legacy of musical romanticism is as complex as its origins. The movements of Impressionism, Expressionism and verismo owed much to the romantic ideas; subsists even repressed romanticism in the work of such anti-Romantic composer like Stravinsky, while a more open romanticism has guided the ideas of composers as close to the music of the twentieth century as Leoš Janáèek and Béla Bartók, or the full romanticism of the one great English composer of the time, Edward Elgar.

However, they were already growing new ideas during the first decade of the new century, and romance did not reach the year 1914 as the central artistic idea. This is the end of the preview. Sign up to access the rest of the document. TERM THE BEATLES Since the early 1960s the most prominent in the landscape of rock factor THE BEATLES Tchaikovsky's Operas Operas Tchaikovsky's Operas Opera entered the Russian musical scene in the 1700's when Italian musicians staged works for the Russian imperial court. Essentially, these were Italian operas and exhibited none of the trappings of Russian style or culture. Russian opera came into it's own during the early 19th century with the composer Glinka. His operas dealt with thoroughly Russian themes in the common vernacular, something that resonated well with Russian audiences. But, he wasn't only the primary force in establishing the operatic traditions of his country. He is also considered to be the first serious Russian composer overall, the man who launched Russia's classical music tradition for the nineteenth century.

Composers of the generation after Glinka, such as Dargomyzhsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky all rushed to create operas in this new tradition. Writing operas seemed to be one of the surest ways to find success as a new composer in Russia. Many of these were successful and are still celebrated today. Tchaikovsky himself wrote eleven operas, two of which were destroyed by him (though some parts of them were later recovered and reconstructed.) Of the nine extant operas, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades, are the only ones that have enjoyed popularity outside of Russia. These two operas have won the same consistent admiration that his three ballets have. It is peculiar that most of the other seven have remained obscure though, especially when considering the fact that he employed the same facility and acumen when writing his operas as he did when penning his ballets. Perhaps he sought to create groundbreaking ballet music, whereas with opera, he had no desire to be an iconoclast or make massive changes to the genre. He simply wished to write moving and dramatically effective operas.

Suffice it to say that many of his operas are confusingly underrated. Indeed, Stravinsky and Prokofiev both considered Tchaikovsky to be Russia's greatest opera composer. In the final analysis, there are certainly treasures to be found in the majority of Tchaikovsky's operas. However, the difficulty for those living outside of Russia is in finding the rare recordings and performances of them. Layout Variations Pyotr Tchaikovsky Pyotr Tchaikovsky Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Festival Overture, 1812, Op. 49 Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake staging at Wolf Trap Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake, Op. 20a Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake, Op. 20a, The story of Act IV Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Andante cantabile Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Selections from The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.

4 in F minor, Op. 36 Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 Loading the player... Understanding the Music: Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique" Op. 74 Loading the player... Watch an excerpt of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E minor Loading the player... Watch the National Symphony Orchestra rehearse Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony. Biography Tchaikovsky was a leading Russian composer of the late 19th century, whose works are notable for their melodic inspiration and their orchestration. He is regarded as the master composer for classical ballet, as demonstrated by his scores for Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and Sleeping Beauty. Among the most subjective of composers, Tchaikovsky is inseparable from his music. His work is a manifestation, sometimes charming, often showy, of repressed feelings that became more and more despairing in later years and were most fully expressed in his Sixth Symphony, one of the greatest symphonic works of its time.

Though his later work rejected conscious Russian nationalism, its underlying sentiment and character are as distinctively Russian as that of the Russian nationalist composers. His success in bridging the gulf between the musician and the general public partly accounts for the position he enjoys in Russia, as well as throughout the world of music. No composer since Tchaikovsky has suffered more from changes of fashion or from the extremes of over- and under-valuation. He achieved an enormous popularity with a wide audience, largely through his more emotional works; but the almost hypnotic effect that he was able to induce led to serious questioning of his true musical quality. He is certainly the greatest master of the classical ballet. His last three symphonies are deservedly famous, and to these should be added the neglected Manfred Symphony, the First Piano Concerto and the Violin Concerto. Notable among his other orchestral works are the early Romeo and Juliet Overture and the exquisite Serenade for Strings. Of the operas, Eugene Onegin is a masterpiece and The Queen of Spades dramatically effective. His chamber music includes string quartets, solo piano music and many fine songs.

Early life and education Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Kamsko-Votkinsk, a small industrial town east of Moscow. His father was superintendent of government-owned mines, and his mother Alexandra was half French. Tchaikovsky was musically precocious, but his interest was not actively encouraged because his parents felt it had an unhealthy effect on an already neurotically excitable child. One night after a party, Alexandra found him awake, pointing to his forehead, and crying, "Oh this music, this music! Take it away! It's here and it won't let me sleep!" Pyotr's father played a great variety of music on his orchestrion, a rudimentary form of a record player. After hearing tunes from the opera Don Giovanni, Pyotr became a lifelong admirer of Mozart. His childhood piano teacher was Maria Palchikova, a freed serf, and within a year he was able to play better than she could. When his father moved to Moscow and then to St. Petersburg, the boy entered the School of Jurisprudence in 1850 and quickly passed through the school's upper divisions.

When he was 14 years old, Tchaikovsky' mother died of cholera. Though his musical training was informal, the boy composed a waltz for piano in her memory. After graduation, Tchaikovsky entered the Ministry of Justice in St. Petersburg as civil servant, a class of workers that represented petty officialdom and oppression to ordinary Russians. Tchaikovsky was not naturally suited to such a job but he remained at the Ministry of Justice for four years, bored but dutiful. He continued playing the piano and going to concerts. He joined the Ministry's own choral group, and in 1861, he began to study musical theory under Nikolai Zaremba, the Head of the Russian Musical Society The pianist and composer Anton Rubenstein, who became the first director of the new St. Petersburg Music Conservatory, was the first to see real signs of talent in Tchaikovsky. When he failed to get a promotion at the Ministry, Tchaikovsky resigned and entered the St. Petersburg Music Conservatory at the age of twenty-two. He supported himself by teaching music, learned to play organ and flute, and joined the Conservatory orchestra.

Tchaikovsky's first orchestral score (1864), an overture based on Aleksandr Ostrovsky's melancholy play The Storm, is remarkable in that it shows many of the stylistic features that would later be associated with his music. Rubenstein, whose tastes were formed by earlier styles, was critical of the work; he had expected Tchaikovsky's composition to be dark and dreary, Tchaikovsky instead created a colorful, dramatic piece of "program music," including unusual instruments such as the harp, oboe, and tuba. Rubenstein was also critical of Tchaikovsky's graduation exercise, a cantata representing Schiller's Ode to Joy. The cantata was performed January 12, 1866, in the presence of a distinguished audience - but Tchaikovsky was too nervous to attend. Rubenstein threatened to withhold Tchaikovsky's diploma, but nobody could deny Pyotr's outstanding talent. In late 1865, Rubenstein's brother Nikolai, director of the newly established Moscow Conservatory offered Tchaikovsky a post as professor of harmony, five years of lodging and monetary support to Tchaikovsky.

Career Tchaikovsky settled in Moscow in January 1866, although he underwent a mental crisis as a consequence of overwork on his Symphony No. 1 in G minor (Winter Daydreams), Opus 13 (1866). His compositions of the late 1860s and early '70s reveal a distinct affinity with the music of the nationalist group of composers in St. Petersburg, both in their treatment of folk song and in their harmonies deriving from a common link with Mikhail Glinka, the "father" of a Russian nationalist style. He corresponded with the leader of the group, Mily Balakirev, at whose suggestion he wrote a fantasy overture, Romeo and Juliet (1869). Tchaikovsky's intrinsic charm is nowhere more apparent than in the nationalist comic opera Valkula the Smith (1874; first performed 1876), which in its revised form, Cherevicki (The Little Shoes), is of similar merit to another opera, Sorochintsy Fair (also based on one of Nikolay Gogol's Ukrainian tales), by the most original composer in the Petersburg group, Modest Mussorgsky.

Tchaikovsky's opera, however, is much closer to Balakirev's own folkloric idiom than anything Mussorgsky wrote. After a fleeting, but unsuccessful, love affair with Désirée Artôt, the prima donna of a visiting Italian opera company, he had only one further romantic relationship with a woman. In the mid-1870s he had another nervous breakdown. One of the symptoms of this nadir in his life was almost hysterical activity in composition culminating in the Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Opus 36 (1877), and the opera Eugene Onegin (1877-78), based on a poem by Aleksandr Pushkin. He felt in such sympathy with Pushkin's heroine, Tatyana, that when a former music student, Antonina Milyukova, became infatuated with Tchaikovsky, threatening suicide should he reject her, he identified her in his mind with the cruelly spurned Tatyana and consented to marry her. Late in 1876, Tchaikovsky had begun an extraordinary correspondence with an admirer of his compositions, the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck.

She created an annuity sufficient to allow Tchaikovsky to devote himself entirely to composition. By her wish, the two never met. Their intimate correspondence was more revealing of her than of Tchaikovsky. Wishing always to be liked, he was apt to write what he thought people wanted to read rather than what he really thought. The detailed program of his Fourth Symphony, which he made up especially for her, is generally regarded with circumspection. He later averred that replying to her frequently effusive letters had become "irksome." All the same, this curious relationship apparently fulfilled a deeply felt psychological need for both, particularly for Tchaikovsky, whose wife, proving importunate even after a separation had been arranged, had to be bought off. Tchaikovsky's attempts to justify to himself her generous annuity caused him to overwork during the next few years. He composed the Piano Sonata in G major, Opus 37 (1878), the orchestral Suite No.

1 in D minor, Opus 43 (1878-79), music for the coronation of his patron the Emperor Alexander III, and the first of his mature attempts to write a commercially successful opera, The Maid of Orleans, (1878-79). The years 1878 to 1881 also included several major achievements: the Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 35 (1878), and the popular Serenade for String in C major, Opus 48 (1880); Capriccio italien, Opus 45 (1880); and the 1812 Overture, Opus 49 (1880). Eugene Onegin, which was only a token success at its Moscow premiere, enjoyed great popularity in St. Petersburg because of the emperor's admiration. The Manfred Symphony Opus 58, composed in 1885, not only called forth unstinted praise but showed in some of its histrionically despairing episodes the path that Tchaikovsky's life and music were to follow in the last years.

In 1885 he bought a house at Maidanovo, near Moscow, where he lived until the year before his death, when he moved into the house that is now the Tchaikovsky House Museum in the nearby town of Klin. He began to travel more in Russia and vacationed twice in the Caucasus. He overcame an aversion to conducting and in 1888 undertook an important and well received foreign tour, directing his own works in Leipzig (where he met the composers Johannes Brahms and Edvard Grieg), Hamburg, Berlin, Prague, Paris, and London. This tour was the apex of Tchaikovsky's later life. From then on, despite the continuing success of many of his former compositions and the acclamation of new ones, including his second Pushkin opera, The Queen of Spades, and his favorite ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, he was working his way toward another nervous breakdown. His major compositions, starting with Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Opus 64 (1888), became more and more intense and emotional, filled with both exaltation and despair.

Tchaikovsky went on further tours, including to the United States and England, where he conducted his popular Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Opus 23 (composed 1874-75), in 1889 and his Fourth Symphony in 1893. In 1893 Cambridge University awarded him an honorary doctor of music degree. These and other successes, including the tumultuous reception accorded to the suite he hastily made for concert performance from his Nutcracker ballet music (1892), did not alter the inexorable decline in his mental condition, which was aggravated in 1890 when Nadezhda von Meck suddenly ended both their correspondence and the annuity. From a financial standpoint this hardly mattered, because the royalties from The Queen of Spades covered the loss without difficulty, and he was by this time a recipient of a state pension. Tchaikovsky never forgave her, and the nature of the psychological wound it inflicted upon him can be judged by the fact that in the delirium of his last illness he repeated her name again and again in indignant tones. In August 1893 Tchaikovsky completed his Symphony No.

6 in B minor, Opus 74 (Pathétique) which was his last and which he rightfully regarded as a masterpiece. On October 28 he conducted its first performance in St. Petersburg. Its novel slow finale could hardly have been expected to induce such applause as had greeted, only 18 months earlier, the premiere of the lighter Nutcracker Suite. Into this work, with its "secret" program, he had put his whole soul. Tchaikovsky was devastated by the public response. On November 2, 1893-six days after the premiere-he died. Excerpted from an essay by Maros Gazdarica: Compositions "Bluebird" Pas de Deux from Act III of The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66 "The Voyevoda" 1812 Overture, Op. 49 Eugene Onegin, Lyric Scenes in Three Acts (Libretto by the composer and Konstatin Shilovsky, after Pushkin), Op. 24 Eugene Onegin Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32 Hamlet, Fantasy Overture after Shakespeare, Op.

67 Lensky's Aria (arranged for cello & orchestra) Manfred, Symphonic Poem after Byron The Nutcracker Suite, No. 1 The Seasons Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50 Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op. 13 "Winter Dreams" Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17 (Little Russian) Symphony No. 3 "Polish" Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Path&#233tique, Op. 74 Valse-Scherzo, Op. 34

Question: Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades were operas by which composer?
Answer: Tchaikovsky